LANGLEY — Welcome girls basketball fans!
Day 1 of the TBI Super 16 draw is upon us.
Please keep checking back throughout the day as we do our best to update this post with live games reports.
We will try to get photos from as many games as we can, but there are no guarantees.
Thanks for following along, and if you can’t make it to the Langley Events Centre, every game, all tournament long, is available on our free livestream at TFSETV.ca
Enjoy the games
(All Stories by HOWARD TSUMURA)
RIVERSIDE 85 SEMIAHMOO 29
LANGLEY — Semiahmoo players weren’t trying to pretend that a decisive loss to the Quad-A No. 3-ranked Riverside Rapids didn’t sting here Wednesday in the opening round of the 2024 Super 16 bracket.
Yet maybe the most impressive thing about one of the most dominant teams outside of the B.C. senior varsity ranks the past two seasons, is that if you didn’t look at the scoreboard, you’d have had no idea that they were trailing by the large margin that they were.
“Our body languare is so important for us and they are so good about their energy anyway,” said Thunderbirds’ head coach Simrit Bindra, the former Panorama Ridge Thunder standout who played at TBI in 2017.
“We always tell them they have to keep their chins up no matter what,” continued Bindra whose team merited honourable mention status in the latest Quad-A ranking sheet. “We know that this is a learning year for us, but we wanted to make the jump up this year because we know we can compete with these teams, and we’ve got strep throat going through our team right now, but we’re so excited to be here competing with these teams. To be in this bracket is amazing as well.”
There was also the fact that Wednesday’s tip-off was the first game of the season for Semiahmoo, which hunkered down in practice this past week following the full return of its roster after the B.C. high school volleyball championships.
To take that to another level, the Grade 10 core of this year’s Thunderbirds team, which includes top talents like 5-foot-10 guard Jaida Claypool, was actually playing its first-ever game at the senior varsity level.
All of that said, Riverside is still Riverside, since the turn of the century, enduring like no other top-tiered program in B.C.
After appearing in the past three B.C. Quad-A finals including the 2023 championship season, a Rapids team led by its 5-foot-10 senior guard Jorja Hart had already played in two invitational tournament championships final where they’d gone up against No. 1 Seaquam and No. 2 Brookswood in back-to-back weekends.
“They have good players,” said Riverside head coach Paul Langford of a Semi team which went undefeated in 2022-23 to win the B.C. Grade 8 title, then lost just once last season en route to winning the B.C. junior girls title.
“And also,” he continued, “it’s our 11th game this year and it was our first.”
Hart led the winners with 33 points, while fellow senior guard Mikella Campanile added 19 more.
Claypool, who is coached on her VK Basketball club team by Riverside coached Langford and Jeremy Neufeld, led her team with 10 points.
Claypool was the MVP for her team at both the Grade 8 and junior B.C. tournaments.
Savanna Wong had seven points and Sonum Sran another six for Semiahmoo.
“They have their experience, they have played their last game (of a season) on this court so they know what this court means to basketball (in B.C.),” added Bindra. “So we were preparing the last couple of weeks as we knew we were playing them. We wanted to come into this strong and we didn’t have the start we wanted to. I think that had a lot to do with nerves.”
Riverside meets the St. Thomas More-GW Graham winner Thursday (4:30 pm) in the quarterfinals. Semiahmoo will turn their alarm clocks again for an 8:30 a.m. game Thursday against the More-Graham loser.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR 83 LANGLEY CHRISTIAN 54
LANGLEY — Hanna Grewal has been learning a lot about acceleration in her Physics 11 class at Surrey’s Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School.
Funny thing, but those lessons seem to apply perfectly to the ideals both she and her teammates took to the floor with here Wednesday in the opening round of TBI’s Super 16 bracket.
“I love this team cause we all have the same mindset because we all just run, run, run,” said Grewal, the mercury-footed 5-foot-4 Grade 11 guard who poured home a game-high 23 points en route to Player of the Game honours. “And we’re ready for it.”
Ranked No. 6 at Quad-A in the latest B.C. Top 10 poll, the Mike Mitro-coached Panthers lived up to their prowling namesake with their 40 minutes of attack-minded enthusiasm.
On Wednesday, the team’s lone two seniors provided offence in support of Grewal as guard Sammy Ma added 16 points, and forward Saavyn Mann another 12 points.
Payton Brunoro led the Lightning, ranked No. 3 in Double-A, with 13 points while Georgia VanderWaarde had 11 and Gaby Vis 11 in addition to a number of shot blocks and deflections.
Afterwards Grewal, who will have to catch up on missing her Physics 11 class for the game, admitted that the release of the TBI schedule last month shifted the team’s practices into high gear.
“We prepped all weekend, all month all preseason for this tournament so we are ready for it,” she said. “Being in the Select 16 the past couple of years and now coming into it this year in the Super 16 was huge for us, and so we’re ready and excited to play the big teams.”
GW. GRAHAM 89 ST. THOMAS MORE 71
LANGLEY — These are heady days for the G.W. Graham Grizzlies.
There were those back-to-back B.C. Double-A championship game appearances in 2018 and ’19.
And now, after a move up to the province’s largest Quad-A tier, a Final Eight appearance in its return to the Big Dance last spring.
On Thursday, as a new season enters its third week, the Grizzlies are back at the TBI, this time in the Super 16 bracket as B.C.’s No. 4-ranked Quad-A team.
“We’re no longer the team that nobody knows about and we have this foundation of trust on our team now,” said GWG head coach Colleen Folka. “We’re pretty equal in our skills and we trust anyone to take that shot.”
GW Graham had to work hard to get an 89-71 win over a smaller, never-say-die St. Thomas More Knights squad ranked No. 6 in Double-A.
In the end, despite the incredible play of STM’s quicksilver guard trio of Demicah Arnaldo, Kyla Limon and Mia Beliveau, the Grizzlies’ depth and overall size just proved too much for the Knights.
This season’s edition of the Grizzlies has been one of those teams which has stuck together since the start of their high school careers, along the way gaining more and more confidence through its collective battle scars.
“Last year was very big because the last couple of years we were a pretty young team and we never really got too far at all, not even to the Eastern Valley finals,” explained the team’s 5-foot-10 senior guard/forward Ashlyn Adams, who hit five triples against STM en route to 25 points and Player of the Game honours.
What Adams is referring to is a 2023-24 campaign in which the Grizzlies finally broke through and won the Eastern Valley title, then won an its opening-round game at provincials before falling 87-60 to the eventual B.C. champion Seaquam Seahawks in the quarterfinals.
“I feel like we’re up there now,” said Adams, whose team faces the No. 3 Riverside in a massive second-round game Thursday at 4:30 p.m. “I feel like we’re definitely one of the bette teams.”
The Grizzlies’ 6-foot-2 senior post Jada Paquin scored a co-game-high 27 points in the win, a total matched by St. Thomas More’s 5-foot-2 Grade 10 guard Demicah Arnaldo.
Macie Svehla with 20 points and Carmen Folka with 13 also hit double-digits in the win for GWG.
Guards Kyla Limon and Mia Beliveau each scored 18 points in the loss for STM.
ARGYLE 57 CLAREMONT 52
LANGLEY — Victoria’s Claremont Spartans sat on the brink of pulling off a major upset in the opening round of the Super 16 bracket here at TBI 2024 on Wednesday.
When senior forward Iva Kalabric made a lay-up in traffic off a perfect skip pass in the paint from point guard Sadie Nielson, the honourable mention Spartans had pulled to within 55-52 of the No. 5-ranked Argyle Pipers of North Vancouver in an all-Quad-A clash.
Alas, an upset was not in the cards for Claremont, as Argyle eeked out a 57-52 victory, setting up what promises to be a 40-minute track meet in the quarterfinals Thursday (3 p.m.) against the No. 6-ranked Lord Tweedsmuir Panthers of Surrey.
“It was a crazy game, back and forth and I was really proud of our team and how we responded,” said Argyle coach Mike Kidd, who moved down a spot on the bench and assumed the head duties for program boss Anthony Beyrouti.
“That has been a bit of a struggle for us as at the beginning of the year,” continued Kidd, who got 18 points from 6-0 Grade 10 forward Mariia Mayden and 11 more from Grade 11 guard Sophie Danks. “We played them a couple of weeks ago and beat them pretty good, but today they brought a lot more. It was a phsyical game. We were calm under pressure which was nice to see from such a young team.”
Senior Alanna Schiemman did score eight points in the win, but she is the only listed Grade 12 player on the roster.
Grade 11 forward Isabella Milijkovic scored nine points.
Claremont’s Kalabric played like she is ready to take team a long way this season, finishing with a game-high 21 points .
Sadie Neilson and Chelsea Neilson scored eight points each for Claremont.
“I think our youth came out at the end not knowing when to foul, how to foul, and then what we need to get at the end,” said Claremont head coach Marissa Dheensaw. “I am pretty happy with the girls are adapting, I can put them in different matchups and they are rising to the occasion.”
HOLY CROSS 60 OKANAGAN MISSION 48
LANGLEY — There is still so much season left to play, and Surrey’s Holy Cross Crusaders are going to grow a lot more before the provincial tournament gets closer come late February.
Yet there is no doubting that the Crusaders’ 60-48 win over Kelowna’s Okanagan Mission Huskies is a signature victory, perhaps the program’s biggest outside of B.C. tournament play in recent memory.
From start to finish, the Double-A No. 2-ranked Crusaders dictated the terms against the Quad-A No. 7 Huskies, setting up a 7:45 p.m. quarterfinal clash Thursday against the winner of Wednesday’s later Seaquam vs. Sa-Hali game.
With it’s two 6-foot-1 Grade 11 forwards in Solene Jackson and Alyssia Palma effecting play at both ends of their court with their wingspan, athleticism and their own player-to-payer synergy, the Crusaders brought a unique, hard-to-stop aspect to the contest, one which was in play right from the opening tip.
“I think we had a rough ending to our tournament last week (in Victoria),” said Holy Cross head coach Amy Beauchamp. “But I thought the girls came out with energy and that they were ready to go. They knew what they had to do. We had to run, use our length and I was happy with how we started.”
Beauchamp noted that Palma’s offensive game has grown a lot from last season, and that thus far in 2024-25 the pair was building chemistry on a game-to-game basis.
“We can be pretty good when they are at their best,” said Beauchamp. “They have a great relationship, they find each other and they are both fun to watch play together.”
And how about what the combined wingspan on the defensive end?
“They are really hard to shoot over and they are just so quick that it is really nice to have them guard guards. They are just as fast or faster and that is so nice.”
With the bigs doing their thing, the Holy Cross guard rotation provided the perfect balance.
Grade 11 Jada Francis came off the bench and finished with 10 points, her three-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer sending her team into the final frame with a 50-33 lead.
Mila Wojciechowski with eight points and Isla Iannuzzi with six gave the guard trio 24 points in a low scoring, but at times fast-paced contest.
Okanagan Mission, a former TBI champion, got 32 of its 48 points from two players.
Grade 11 guard Shae Sandhu scored 19 points, and Grade 10 guard Hana Friesen added 13 more.
With No. 1 SMUS of Victoria moving back to the Double-A ranks, the tier is loaded with quality teams.
SMUS, Holy Cross, and the defending champions from Langley Christian make up the top three.
BROOKSWOOD 72 DR. CHARLES BEST 49
LANGLEY — Jordyn Nohr, like all great three-point shooters, doesn’t try to tempt the fate of the basketball gods by over-analyzing her gift.
Instead, the Grade 10 point guard with Langley’s Brookswood Bobcats just does what she has to do in the moment to get her team rolling towards a victory.
On Thursday in the opening round of the TBI’s Super 16 bracket, while the Quad-A No. 2 Bobcats were doing a solid job of keeping a well-coached and hard-working Quad-A No. 9 Dr. Charles Best Blue Devils’ squad at arm’s length, the opposition had found away to slow them down at times between the third and fourth quarters.
And thus for whatever reason, there Nohr so suddenly was, ready to do what only the truly great players can do.
With somewhere around two minutes remaining, and Nohr sitting at a healthy 40 points on the night, she decided to try and kick her team out of its collective doldrums.
Suddenly, like some caught far from home without an umbrella during a sudden storm, it began to rain down with threes inside the Langley Event Centre’s Centre Court facility.
She already had six of them by then, but then boom, boom, boom and boom, the final coming with 43 seconds remaining as part of a 72-49 victory.
“I think it was that I was trying to get our team out of a bit of a dryspell we had hit in the second half,” she later explained after finishing with a game-high 52 points, more than she had ever scored against a B.C. opposition at the senior varsity level, and just shy of the 56 points she scored against Raymond High of Alberta at last season’s Riverside tournament.
In fact Brookswood’s last five makes from the field were all three pointers, as Emma Chorney also hit from deep.
What was different about tonight for Nohr?
“Some nights, sometimes you are just feeling it,” she began. “But other times, when it’s not going in, you can adjust your playing in other ways. And once I get scoring in some other ways, I find it’s easier to get my three-point shot back.
Indeed Nohr is showing the dedication of a high school off-season with a stronger, more explosive brand of ball.
Her strength in which she executes her runner, the deftness with which she operates off the hesitation of her dribble… there is so much to notice.
“She knows when to try and take over games and some of our other shooters were not hitting tonight, so she kind of went to it, they never came to double that much,” said the team’s head coach and Jordyn’s mom, Chrissy Nohr. “But they (Charles Best) played a great game. They are so well coached.”
The Bobcats, of course, have moved up to Quad-A after winning the B.C. title last season at Triple-A. And although its school population is closer to that of a Double-A school, Chrissy Nohr says the decision to make the move up was put in the players’ hands.
“I gave them the choice and everyone chose to go up, so they believe they can win 4A, and they like to be pushed,” the coach added.
Ashley Vande Ven and Hazel Phillips each added 10 points in the win. Jessica Parkinson scored 15 points to lead Best, while Mahal Barroso and Elizabeth Fast added 10 points each.
Brookswood faces the winner of the Kelowna-SMUS game in a Thursday (6:15 p.m.) quarterfinal.
SEAQUAM 75 SA-HALI 29
LANGLEY — There is a sense of professionalism around the way B.C.’s defending Quad-A champions are bringing to the proceedings here at TBI 2024.
The Seaquam Seahawks got its four-day run off to a rousing start with a 75-29 win over Kamloops’ Sa-Hali Sabres on Wednesday evening.
And perhaps the mosy impressive thing about the start to its tournament was the way it started off the opening tip.
“It was our defensive energy and taking it one quarter at a time that was really important to us,” senior forward Neelum Sidhu said after the victory, eluding to the fact that the Quad-A No. 1 Seahawks played lockdown defence on the Sabres with the same kind of passion that another Seahawks team, the NFL one from Seattle did, back when its Legion of Boom consisted of guys like Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor.
No, Seaquam defenders weren’t bringing football physicality to the hardwood.
But they were playing with purposeful orchestration when it came to their team defence, pushing it up to a level that seemed more than a good stating point just three weeks into a season.
The proof? Seaquam limited Sa-Hali team ranked No. 2 in B.C. at Triple-A to just three buckets from the field over the entire first half and took a 36-9 lead into the break.
For Sidhu, who scored a team-high 15 points, including stepping out to drain a trio of triples en route to being named Player of the Game, the team has locked into an easily-relatable motto to keep them honest at all times when it comes to the effort part of their game.
“It’s been our motto since Day 1, that our will must be greater than our skill,” said Sidhu. “I think we’re building towards that slowly. And it was great to get everyone in that game. Everyone got some touches and the girls all played well.”
The road just gets tougher for the Seahawks, but the defending champs know what that’s all about.
In fact Sidhu says the team’s motto is easy to lean on, especially when adversity hits.
“I think we’ve really worked our program around that motto, and honestly it’s working well for us. We’re goign to keep it going.”
Ten Seahawks hit the scoresheet.
Syra Toor followed Sidhu with 13 points.
Camryn Tait, the reigning TBI MVP from 2023, who was named Top Defensive Player at the 4A B.C.’s last season, scored 11 points. Mackenzie Henderson had seven while Rishima Malik and Callie Brost had six each.
Nevena Nogic and Isabel Phillips scored nine apiece to lead the Sabres while Iyin Aina had six points.
Seaquam now moves on to the quarterfinals Thursday (7:45 p.m.) where it will face Surrey’s Holy Cross Crusaders, the No. 2-ranked team at Double-A which beat Quad-A No. 7 Okanagan Mission of Kelowna.
KELOWNA 57 ST. MICHAELS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 56
LANGLEY — It was not an oil painting by Rembrandt, nor was it a symphony led by the baton of Leonard Bernstein.
And that’s not to say that there can’t be beauty in basketball.
But sometimes, as was very often the case throughout the final game of TBI’s Super 16 bracket Thursday, an ugly game can say even more about the state of its combatants than an artistic one.
No better example than the Kelowna Owls 57-56 win over St. Michaels University School Blue Jags from Victoria.
Kelowna’s win came despite the fact that it sunk juST one basket from the field over the final near four-minutes of the fourth quarter.
No team, in fact, was able to score points in any fashion for the final 1:45, and the Blue Jags made a multitude of errors over the final stretch in which it it committed two shot clock violations, a number of turnovers, and missed layup attempts under the basket.
“It was an ugly win,” said Owls head coach Peter Guarasci, whose No. 10-ranked Owls next face the No. 2 ranked Brookswood Bobcats in a 6:15 pm quarterfinal Thursday.
“I mean they deserved to win as much as us, we just were lucky enough to end up with the one-point differential at the end, so we’ll take it.”
The Owls were led by the 14 points of senior guard Mavleen Chahal. Fellow senior guard Micah Ramsay added 12, while Kim Enero and forward Cali Ausenhus each scored eight.
SMUS head coach Lindsay Brooke, whose team came into the game ranked No. 1 in the B.C. Double-A Top 10, was asked the best way to find a teaching moment in the loss.
“We were sloppy tonight, so obviously not the defensive effort that we expect as a team,” said Brooke. “Tonight it really spiralled from us.
“A teachable moment? I mean, we got to get back on the horse and play again tomorrow,” Brooke continued. “That is the beauty of this tournament. You get good games, no matter who. We would have loved to be on the winning side, but it’s still early. It’s December 11, we’re at the Howie and we get good games all week long no matter where we finish. So with me, that perspective is important.”
Charlie Anderson, the 5-foot-9 senior guard, led SMUS with a game-high 19 points while senior point guard Avery Geddes added 13. Guard Isabela Herrara Orduna scored 10 points.
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